


Reborn

by ackermom



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Not Really Character Death, Past Character Death, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29311938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ackermom/pseuds/ackermom
Summary: He looks like you, Ymir thinks she should say. But he doesn't, and neither of them would want to hear it even if he did.
Relationships: Krista Lenz | Historia Reiss/Ymir
Comments: 6
Kudos: 59





	Reborn

**Author's Note:**

> chapter 137 leaks said "someone will be resurrected" and i took that personally

It is daybreak before either of them realize. Light creeps in from the corner of the room; it comes in pale stripes, slipping through the slats of the farmhouse window, and it breaks through their silence, a quiet wave crashing against the floor, lapping at the foot of the bed, beckoning the world to wake, and them with it. In the stillness of the sunrise, the night melts away, like butter, the same color as the pale yellow of the room in the glow of morning. A dawn, breaking on their side of the world. Another day, another chance at life. Who knows how long this one will last? 

Ymir hardly moves at the sight of the sunrise— for fear that she will disturb her dream, or the dream of another. For the cold terror that none of this is real after all, not the cotton blankets beneath her feet, nor the weight of Historia's head leaning against her shoulder. She lies awake, in wait, knowing that neither of them slept, knowing that this frail morning may be the only one like it across the world. Knowing that the girl who lay beside her all night in the darkness will rise in the morning a woman, someone new, someone she no longer knows. 

The bed creaks as Historia sits up and shifts off one side: indelicately, tenderly, her hands gripping at the sheets as she forces herself to stand. Her slippers dust on the old wooden floor, a timid unsteady rhythm. The floor groans, sending an ache through the farmhouse that startles a kettle in the kitchen two rooms over. She treads out the door without a word, her nails clenching at the walls as she walks. In the absence of their silence through the night, suddenly the world seems to come alive to Ymir. She lies still on the bed where she lay all night, holding her breath, shifting only to take in the change of daylight, or to pinch herself on the arm. Birds crow somewhere outside. The kettle begins to sing, and doors open, shut, the frame of the farmhouse creaking, waking, the fire crackling alive in the kitchen. It is a house full of people, servants, guards, no matter how quiet it seemed all through the resigned night, in the darkness where they lay together and had nothing to say. 

It is a quiet peace that settles in as the sun comes over the hills. But an uneasy one that finally draws Ymir out of bed. She winces at the whine of the bed beneath her body, as if somehow she is an intruder, an invader, an unwelcome visitor in this time and place where she does not belong. For all she knows, she does not.

She hears the servants whispering through the kitchen walls. They share sighs of relief that their queen survived the night, but every word struggles under a tremor of fear. Something is happening. They all heard it, they whisper, and they are growing restless. No riders have come from the capital. No supply wagons. No soldiers. They are lucky the midwife was already on the road.

Ymir shifts off the side of the bed, blinking into the pale sunlight. The bay window faces southwest, and the light streams in over Ymir's face. She squints. The room overlooks the main road that approaches the farm, and the south side of the pig pen, where they feed at the trough. She watches for a moment, sat at the edge of the bed, as the world wakes around her, as the sky grows paler and the winds stranger, rustling across the open fields of the farm and tousling the cloak of a servant rushing inside with a fresh pail of water. She stares for a moment more, out the window. It is nothing that interesting. But she is keeping her eyes from what lies below it. 

In the kitchen, the kettle screams. 

A sigh comes from the doorway. Ymir glances over her shoulder; she starts, takes to her bare feet, cold on the wooden floor. But she finds herself reluctant to move, or unable, rooted to the useless spot on the bedroom floor where she stands, as Historia returns, walking with a hesitance, one hand clasping her way along the wall as she goes. The strings of her robe trail behind her, and her nightgown flutters along her pale knees as she lumbers towards the rocking chair beside the window. It feels like ages, watching her slippers inch across the floor, the tense determination in her brow, and the sunlight, frail and yellow, rippling dimly in the reflection of her eyes. Ymir knows it must only be seconds, but to her, it feels like forever. Forever, a long time. It is only just before Historia reaches the chair that she finds it in herself— life, will, whatever— to step forward and offer a hand. And it is a touch that feels so cold in the morning light when Historia takes it, her thin fingers clasping onto Ymir's to sit herself back in the chair with a heaving, exhausted sigh. 

Her gaze flicks up to Ymir's face. Even behind the dark circles, she looks older. She is older. Ymir wonders how she looks, after all this time. It has been forever. She feels older, too.

Historia lets out another breath— a sigh from deep within her, as the daylight crosses over the room and casts them in the strange, unfamiliar light of morning. 

“I still don’t understand,” she says finally. 

Ymir turns her gaze back to the window, only for a moment; then she lets her eyes fall to the bassinet beneath the sunlight. It stings her, as suddenly as she was worried it might, the dark eyes that stare back at her. Awake beneath the sunrise at the end of the world. A new life, in an age where life is so rare a gift. A precious thing, she wants to think of the baby, who lies still and quiet beneath her blank gaze, but all she has are questions. 

"Neither do I," she answers.

A bird calls outside, and the sunlight ripples over the room. The baby scrunches up his face. He is red, a tiny thing, and quiet, as he curls around in the white cotton that swaddles him. He looks like you, Ymir thinks she should say. But he doesn't, and neither of them would want to hear it even if he did.

“Where were you?” comes Historia’s voice from behind her. 

It is a different iteration of the question she asked a dozen times last night, when the darkness was setting in and Ymir found herself unexpectedly on her hands and knees in the dirt outside the farmhouse— splayed in the mud like a pig, dropped onto all fours as if she had fallen from the roof and crashed to the ground; and there, a startled face staring down at her from the top porch step, with a ragged shawl on her shoulders, her pale hair in stringy locks, and one hand drawn to the falling swell of her stomach, as her words failed her and the newborn cried from the nursery. She had only questions, as did Ymir, but through the night, non-answers were enough for either of them. It was unbelievable then, in the darkness as they lay in silence together and their hands found familiar touches on their skin, the places they had once known each other. Not knowing was enough for the night. But daylight brings a different shade. 

"Gone," is what Ymir offers. Her voice rings hollow, because it is not the answer either of them want. She watches the baby, her head turned down. "Not dead, not really. I don't think. Somewhere neither here nor there."

It is the best way she can explain. She opens her mouth to say more, to say _I remember meeting someone there_ , but that might be a lie and she has had enough of false promises. 

“But you died,” Historia says bluntly. Ymir turns, and the gaze she meets weighs heavily on the tired lines in Historia’s face. She is asking. Again, and Ymir does not know the answer. Not as well as she thought she did. “Didn’t you?”

“I guess.” She does not remember now. There was a long journey on horseback, and then a ship across the sea. “I guess I did.”

“You died,” Historia tells her. “They used you.”

"I returned what I borrowed,” she says, and then, the thing she has been holding back, coming up now in breaths that she cannot control, “I left because I had to protect you. I knew that here, at least you’d be...”

Even before the words have left her mouth, Ymir knows that they are not true. It may have never been true— what she promised the two of them, even if Historia did not know it. Neither of them could have known. But was any of it real? The questions come, on the tip of her tongue, the ones she has been keeping down all night, and it is only by biting so hard she draws blood that she stops herself from letting them spill over the dam now: what if she had stayed? Could she have made a difference? Could things have ended up any other way, or were they always fated to be here? 

The house creaks around them. Movement, the servants scurrying about to start the day. Another day, another dawn, no matter what the next night might bring. The baby coos, and Ymir, uncertain, shifts away from the bassinet, her bare feet trodding backwards along the floorboards until she is pressed with her back to the window, the sunrise falling over her shoulders in soft streaks of white. She feels herself take a breath— in, out, a normal thing that people do, but something that feels so strange, to breathe, to see, to move above water again, to know that what’s in front of her can be held under her fingers— and then another one, that she holds at the top of her lungs, when the rocking chair creaks and Historia rises again, one hand clutching at the wooden bedpost to bring herself to her feet. She comes to the foot of the bassinet, where the baby gurgles, a soft little cry like a bird. For a moment, she stands there, Ymir uncertainly at her side, as the dawn passes over the room and the baby fumbles in his swaddle, moving the best he can. Then she reaches in. A slow hand, instinctual, a pity. He softens at her touch, as she rubs her hand back and forth in little circles over his tiny chest, the knots of cotton wrapped over his heart. 

"And you,” is all Ymir says. It’s all she has to say. Some questions rise above all else, and she cannot even find the words to ask them. She doesn’t think either of them know the answer, if there is one. If there is any point in making sense of anything anymore. 

Historia's hand slows. She does not look up, but she picks at the knot of the swaddle, the cotton prickling beneath the rough edges of her nails.

"This is what I wanted," she whispers, a lie or the truth. She is good at doing both blank-faced, staring into the dawn with bags under her eyes.

"Queen," Ymir says without thinking. "Is that what you wanted too?"

She watches as Historia takes a tall breath— lets her eyes flutter shut, her hand still on the baby in the crib, and wait there in the middle of the sunrise. A square of light passes over her face when Ymir shifts upright. It stays there as she lets out the breath, just as slowly, precisely, a measured practice, a reminder. Lungs full of the air of a new day. Another one crossed off the calendar, another step through the sand.

Historia’s hair falls over her shoulders when she glances up to Ymir, her eyes open again, dark on the half of her face still in the shadows; the other half, alive. She reaches up with one hand. For the first time, her heart betrays her, as her eyes fill, her lips purse together. She watches Ymir with such tenderness, and she touches her just the same. One hand on the side of her face, reaching out as if it is all a test. She’s warm, full of blood, of sunlight; Ymir takes her in, breathes her, cups a tender hand to Historia’s fingers and revels, again, in the feeling of her there, beneath her own skin, within her grasp. 


End file.
